


spires high, hopes below

by thescyfychannel



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Battle, F/M, Fights, God Tier (Homestuck), Land of Wrath and Angels, M/M, Multi, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22679353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescyfychannel/pseuds/thescyfychannel
Summary: Eridan is sprawled out beside you, back against the cool wall and eyes on the sky. Sollux has been gone ten minutes; the two of you will go tracking for him if he is not back in five.You are on LOWAA. You are in a war zone.---There is one last place the trolls SGRUB session needs to beat for them to finally win the game and claim their final reward—sort of. This is the beginning of the end game, and it's taken them far too long to get there, and it make take them longer still to make it back home.
Relationships: Eridan Ampora/Feferi Peixes, Eridan Ampora/Sollux Captor, Eridan Ampora/Sollux Captor/Feferi Peixes, Sollux Captor/Feferi Peixes
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47
Collections: Polyswap Leap Promptfest - Dawn Edition





	spires high, hopes below

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [auxanges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxanges/pseuds/auxanges) in the [Polyswap_Leap_Promptfest_Dawn_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Polyswap_Leap_Promptfest_Dawn_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> my heart soul and general organs for a lowaa prompt. maybe theyre church hopping? sollux assisting a seadweller or two who arent fans of heights be.....not that? i just look for every opportunity to see more lowaa content, simple peon of ampora stanning that i am
> 
> \---
> 
> so uh...this went places?? I hope you like it??

You wipe one shaking hand across a tired eye and miss; two seconds later you catch your reflection in a shattered piece of mirror and you are grateful for this, ink and dust still stain your hands and now they stain your face as well. In a place as hostile as this, you would rather dim your biolum spots than damage your eyes.

Eridan is sprawled out beside you, back against the cool wall and eyes on the sky. Sollux has been gone ten minutes; the two of you will go tracking for him if he is not back in five.

You are on LOWAA. You are in a war zone.

* * *

These days, you dream in maps, maps that you write as soon as the moon rises high, maps that spill out from beneath your fingertips, same as they do Eridan's, same as they do Sollux's. LOWAA is the last remaining planet that has not given up its secrets, that has not allowed the twelve of you your victory, and more and more the word _victory_ is starting to sound like it rhymes with _freedom_. The game that was supposed to save you (you few, fragmented fraction of your spacefaring race) has become a cage.

(you remember the night the twelve of you drew straws, at Eridan's insistence, deciding who would go back in to scout. give all of you an edge. you remember Karkat insisting that Eridan wasn't allowed to put himself on the roster immediately, no matter _what_ idiotic thing he was trying to atone for. you remember cheating to get the short straw. you remember Eridan doing the same.)

(you remember Sollux standing at the gateway to LOWAA, a pack slung over his shoulder and a grim expression on his face. like knows like. you remember looking at Eridan and knowing that you had to take him with you.)

The maps you dream may or may not be right, but even that statement's not the full truth: They are _always_ right, to some degree. Whatever combinations your powers take when you dream have been influenced by the trolls you travel with, and you dig up Sollux's prophecies with your bare hands, take them to Eridan to be refined.

All three of you have gone godtier, since setting foot in this land. You remember Sollux's trip to LOBAF vividly; yours to LODAG is more of a haze.

Every map you make has meaning, but not all of them apply—Eridan says that it's more like the three of you have yet to find the proper applications, Sollux says it's something to do with approaches and minds. You let them debate it out as you focus and draw. Sollux, to handle the scouting, Eridan, to handle the creation of the maps that depend upon actual, physical evidence, and you to compare between.

Except when Eridan or Sollux takes over that, except when you go chasing off after some stray thought (put into your head via Eridan's, maybe, it's his land and it knows him closest, he knows it best), except when it's your job to heal them.

Duties are passed between the three of you evenly: You are on LOWAA. You are in a war zone.

* * *

Sollux returns just after the fifteen minute mark, but before you're fully ready to go searching for him: He catches you both, gear packed and map spread, trying to chart his course based on what you'd known and seen and how he thinks, and the two of you are about to start informing him what you think of such behaviour when you see the look on his face.

"I found it," he says, and you and Eridan share another one of those looks. "I found the Fount."

He looks shaken, his expression ashen, and the two of you bundle him back into safe shelter to wait out the rest of the night and day. The _Fount_ , as you've been calling it, can wait.

* * *

"There's a place the angels come from," Eridan says, over the quiet of a fire. Cooking your meals over open flames inside of unusual sylladex contrivances your friends create, or whatever things they might send you, is a rare treat. "Used to call it the Fount, I guess? Thought it 'dried up' when I'd killed off the last of them, but I guess LOWAA started makin them again, got it to work, somehow."

"So you've been there? You know what it's like?" You are sharp-eyed, watching Eridan for any flicker of discomfort, his little tells of distress ( _any sign of a lie,_ your brain reminds you, _because we still can't trust him yet_ ). "You can tell us how to get there?"

"That's what I thought I could do," he says, grimacing. A quick glance over to where Sollux is pretending to be asleep; you still have not worked out who Eridan trusts more among the two of you. "It's where we've been headin, but...since we got to the top a this spire, I could see the fountain they came from—s'why I started callin it the Fount—an there's shit all down there, Fef. I've got no clue where the fuckin bastards are bein made this time."

You close your eyes and flare your gills, remind yourself to breathe. This isn't technically his fault. "Then we'll find it together. You can take us to the old Fount in the morning."

* * *

You pack up and head out for the location Sollux had scouted at the next sign of night—a night of rest and a whole day of sleep, traded off in shifts, has been good for the three of you. This time, you're ready.

* * *

Eridan dies protecting the both of you on that ill-fated trip to the first Fount.

Almost dies.

The two of you get him to his quest bed in time, and it is a hell of an irony that it turns out to be another spire, formerly buried in the earth, unlocked by the spilling of the Prince's blood: It rises up from where the Fount once stood, the fountain that makes it becoming part of its decorative top, and only your quick reaction times—tucking Eridan into the base of the fountain, grabbing on tight, shouting for Sollux to follow you up in flight—saves the three of you as it rumbles and rushes and rises to full height.

Sollux flies him down into the room of his quest bed; you swing yourself through an open window, and wait, and watch—

—and then Sollux grabs you and hauls you out of the room as light flares, dragging you to a safe distance as Eridan is resurrected a god and the first Fount is destroyed.

You think, maybe, that that was how he was always supposed to do it.

You know he sometimes has a tendency to do the right things wrong.

* * *

Your work takes you along the heights of LOWAA, across its monochrome spires. You use what you, what the angels, what Eridan, whatever every single visitor to this place has left behind. That's half a lie: You only use what the angels have left when you're sure that it's been tamed.

But this is what most of you leave: Ropes, and pegs, and odd constructs of bridges between spaces. You are Eridan's server player yet, for whatever little that means, and whenever you get the chance to build helpful paths and useful tricks with the grist your distance teammates send you, you take it.

The first time Eridan found you at this, he swore. You'd thought it was over your design sensibilities, and had been ready to point out that you'd kept everything _exactly_ in line with his aesthetic and the land's architecture, then he reached into a pack and pulled out a map you'd scrawled six nights ago.

"Look, Fef," he says, tracing along the pathways you'd made, the ones you followed in your dreams. "It matches."

It had been the start of something. At the time, you'd thought you'd known what.

You follow along a path you built perigees ago, and reminisce: This had been your first attempt to deliberately construct one of the maps you'd seen in your dreams, and it had ended in explosions and fire and oilslick death.

All your other memories of it are hazy—LOWAA to LODAG to safe harbour home—but you remember deciding never to try that again. Instead, you build whatever you see fit, whatever you deem necessary, and let Eridan and Sollux take their turns matching up maps to making.

* * *

Sollux's insistence on his own inclusion has been the greatest blessing this damn game could give you. He is a warm presence (literally, figuratively) at your side, between the two of you, and even before all three of you had wings to carry, you appreciated him for far more than his abilities in flight and fight.

Now he is the steady glow of red and blue in the night as he takes point, leading the three of you onwards. You remember tucking in against his side, your legs sprawled over his lap as he settled in against Eridan's chest, as Eridan's hand found the long tumble of your curls—you remember it over and over, so many days and nights, that they all layer together in one image of safety and home.

"It's not a fountain this time," he says, amused and grim. "I think they'd been hiding it, somehow? Cloaking and shit. Whatever we did over the last perigee or so must have disturbed it because I nearly ran into the fucking stonework without noticing it or meaning to—I think the angels were about to attack, but they didn't want me to think it was anything more special or worth defending, so I faked like I was just pissed about getting my course wrong and zoomed out of there after blasting a couple of the feathery bastard demons."

"Do you think it worked?" This is Eridan, quietly concerned for whatever tricks his land's creatures might be up to. He knows, all too well, the traps they tend to lay. "Any chance they'll have a go at following you back to our latest hideout?"

"Nope," Sollux says, satisfied with himself. "Made sure of it before I went back in again—underground this time—to get a peek at what they were really doing."

You trace over a freshly healed scar, pale silver on his cheek. "Is that what took you so long?"

"That and the doubling back to check my trail." He wraps arms around both your shoulders, tired eyes bright with new hope and laughter, and hauls you both in close. "I saw one being formed. Guys, we fucking _found it_."

Then he tells you where it is, and you try not to dwell on the irony of it being the place where you died (nearly died), a spot you'd thought you'd all covered ages and ages ago.

"First nightfall," Eridan says, and it sounds like the unspoken promise you'd all fought so hard to keep: _We're finally going home._

* * *

Your name is Feferi Peixes. You have spent the last three sweeps playing a game with your friends. You have spent almost the entirety of the last sweep and a bit in a place in a land called LOWAA, a land that became a war zone. You were not alone: Eridan Ampora, a prince without a land to call home; and Sollux Captor, a mage whose prophecies seemed caught in another time; came with you. You are—you think—incredibly close to finding a way out.

Your name is Feferi Peixes, and you are going to win.


End file.
